Category: Hope

Keeping it Real On the Path to Wherever I am Going

The sense of loss and the emptiness of having traveled so far just to get to this place can be overwhelming.

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I have been writing now for about twelve years on this blog. I started it because I am a professional writer (of sorts), and I wanted to use the talents God gave me for something bigger than me.

I became a Christian in college, and that conversion diverted me from any career path I might have wandered down. I should emphasize the wandering, because I wasn’t very career-minded to begin with. I was a truth seeker, and I still am.

I thought I would go into “ministry”. That’s all I really wanted to do, but I wasn’t on a track for ministry. It was a very secular college with very traditionally secular guidance to provide. I was a crazy Christian convert who was reading the Bible and believing it.

I became a student leader of the campus InterVarsity group. We had virtually no oversight. That group of fledgling college students, like myself, was my discipleship group

I was certain about one thing: that God existed, and He had changed me. I didn’t know much of anything else.

I gravitated toward a local independent, Charismatic church about 40 minutes away. I would go to church there many Sundays, but I was a college student preoccupied with the things college students did. I mentored with the head pastor for a short time, but not long enough to make much of a difference.

I didn’t trust my college advisors because they didn’t believe the Bible like I did. I should have gone to seminary, but I didn’t because the apostles who stood up on the day of Pentecost and preached powerfully and eloquently in various tongues to the crowds in Jerusalem were unlearned men. I wanted to be like them.

These words Paul spoke to the Corinthians heavily influenced me: The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18); and God makes foolishness the wisdom of the age. (1 Cor. 1:20-21) I thought I didn’t need a seminary. In truth, I was afraid that a seminary would try to conform me by the wisdom of the age.

I should have paid more attention to what Paul said to the Corinthians: Greeks look for (worldly wisdom), but the Jews demand signs. (I Cor. 1:22) I wanted signs. It turns out that Paul was right. Worldly wisdom and demanding signs are both misguided paths.

I went off to the East Coast chasing after a church, the legend of which I heard from the man who become my best friend in college. Maybe the best friend I have ever had. A true brother in the Lord, Jesus.

We encouraged each other in that season of our lives. We both had become Christians after leading wild, existentially-angst-filled lives in our youth. We came to the kingdom of God with baggage (who doesn’t?), but we knew that Jesus had the words of life, and we were all in.

I packed my bags for a summer counseling job in a Christian camp on the south side of Like Winnipesaukee like Abraham leaving behind his homeland for the promised land. I didn’t believe I was ever coming back. Only God knew my intentions at the time.

After camp ended and I helped to close it up for the next camping season, I moved a half hour north into the last communal house left over from the Jesus People movement that swept this tourist area in the late 60’s and early 70’s. That movement of the Holy Spirit caught a bunch of migrant hippies in its current and deposited them downstream from wherever they thought they were wandering into Christian communal living.

Those communes were a legend I only heard snippets about when I arrived, but the communal spirit was still in the air. I loved it. I embraced that communal spirit for the next 40 months, and I plugged into the life of that church.

I grew up as person and as a young Christian during that time in many ways. The church was edgy. It was brash. It tried to be authentic. It dared to think big, and I ate it up. But, it wouldn’t last. (It disintegrated and splintered into many fragments not long after we left it.)

I still wanted to be in ministry, though I had no vision. I thought it would just happen. I had heard that a man’s gift makes room for itself. (I think that is in a Proverb somewhere.) But it wasn’t happening for me. I was also young and impatient and impetuous.

I had always longed for love and intimacy. I was a romantic dreamer. I was heavily influenced by Disney stories of life lived happily ever after, but I knew nothing of the promise those stories offered. I still don’t.

I married on a whim, encouraged by “a word spoken over me” that I didn’t understand, but I acted anyway. That determination to act was pivotal.

Just over 40 years have past. I have been married, now, for 39 years. It would be 40 years in November, but my wife left me almost two years ago, and I don’t think we are going to make it to 40.

I am not sure exactly where I am going here today, other than the need I feel to keep things real. I don’t usually focus so much on myself, but I have gotten used to writing to work out the thoughts in my head, and today those thoughts involve trying to make some sense of my life.

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You Might Be A Pharisee If ….

Just when we become proud of our own spiritual advancement we are most in danger of spiritual catastrophe!

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[29] “Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. [30] And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have participated with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’

Matthew 23:29-30

Reading this passage in Matthew today reminded of the old bit by the comic, Jeff Foxworthy. If Jeff Foxworthy was a comic in 1st Century Judea, he might have said, “You might be a Pharisee if ____________________ (fill in the blank).”

In a similar vein, we could say, “You might be a Pharisee if you think you would not have opposed Jesus if you lived in Judea in the 1st Century.”

Of course, Jesus wasn’t being funny when he confronted the Pharisees, and this wouldn’t be a comedic schtick.

I don’t think Jesus was saying it was wrong for people to build tombs to the prophets or decorate them with flowers. Jesus was saying it was wrong to say (and think) they would have treated the prophets any differently.

The Pharisees are to us what the prophets were to the Pharisees. We may be tempted to think that we would embraced Jesus if we lived in 1st Century Judea, and would not have opposed him or called for his crucifixion if we we were in the crowd that shouted, “Crucify him!”.

But, that is no different than how the Pharisees thought and what the Pharisees claimed about the prophets that were resisted, derided, and sometimes killed by the “religious” people of their day. Jesus was clearly implying that the religious people of his day (the Pharisees), were no different than the religious people in the days of the prophets.

Can we say, then, that we are different than they?

Only if we adopt the same thinking as the Pharisees! (If I am understanding Jesus accurately.)

The Pharisees thought of themselves more highly than they should have. John came preaching repentance, for the Kingdom of God is near! But, the Pharisees didn’t repent. They didn’t think they needed to repent.

When Jesus – who was God in the flesh – came into the world, the Pharisees didn’t recognize Him or receive Him. (John 1:9-11) They did not prepare themselves for his coming by repenting, as John the Baptist exhorted. They adopted the wrong attitude about what God was doing in their time, and they didn’t hear and respond to what God God’s messenger was saying.

Pharisees say the right things, and they do the right things, but they fool themselves. What the Pharisees said and did was a façade. Their hearts were not aligned with their actions. They claimed to be experts in the Law, but Jesus called them blind guides leading blind followers. (Matt. 15:14)

Pharisees were concerned with appearances and the way people saw them. Pharisees were not as concerned with their heart attitudes. Jesus called them “white-washed tombs” that were empty inside (full of dead people’s bones and uncleanness). (Matt. 23:27-28) We need to be careful that we do become like the Pharisees.

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Comments on Why God Became Incarnate and Died for Our Sins

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Daniel Mann does a good job of explaining Why Christ, as God Incarnate, Had to Die for Our Sins. In reading his explanation, my mind goes to statements like God’s “transcendent love” and “total abhorrence for sin”, God’s “righteousness” and “divine forbearance” for sin, and the price that had to be paid “to satisfy God’s righteous character”.

Daniel describes his own reaction to these concepts formerly, as a non-Christian. He felt God was a “deceiving sadist” until one day he realized that Jesus was God incarnate, that God did not merely sacrifice a created being – God sacrificed Himself in human form!

Indeed, that is the central point of Christian belief, which is described beautifully and poignantly in Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:5-8):

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature [form of] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature [form] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

These things would be small consolation, also, if not for the victory on the other side of the cross (Phil. 2:9-11)

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

That Jesus was fully man and fully God incarnated into a man is key to the understanding of Christianity. That God is three “persons” in one is also key, as it provides some explanation how God can incarnate Himself into the form of a man and die (in human flesh), though God remains self-existent and eternal, the Creator (and not a created being).

Not that there is no mystery in this. I concede this is hard for creatures who are limited dimensionally to wrap our heads around these ideas.

Finally, it explains how (and why) death to Jesus in the flesh had no power over him. As God incarnate, death “could not hold him”. (Acts 2:24)

But, I am not writing to clarify these aspects of Christian doctrine. I want to focus on Daniel Mann’s personal revelation that Jesus was God incarnate, and his death was voluntary – God sacrificing Himself, and not God sacrificing some created being.

This realization made all the difference for him. When he really understood this distinction, he began to see the love of God that was demonstrated in that act of self-sacrifice – something God did not have to to, but He did it for us because He loves us.

Other people, I know, are not convinced. Indeed, if a person understands Jesus to be human only, and not God incarnate, the story makes no sense.

Another stumbling block is God’s “abhorrence for sin” and the need to satiate a “righteous” God. These Christian concepts are foreign territory for many people. Why, if God is so loving, does He demand sacrifices for sin?

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Meeting People Where They Are

We don’t do this journey alone. We do it in fellowship with each other. We need each other, and we need to love each other.

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The title of this blog piece seems so simplistic. Yet, this simple statement spoken by Kyla Gillespie to Preston Sprinkle in their conversation on his podcast, Theology in the Raw, hit me like a breath of fresh new air this morning.

Before getting to my point in this article, I want to reference an article I previously wrote that was largely about my perspective in my journey to faith and through faith to the spiritual place I am now. I called it, God Meets Us Where We Are.

I mention my article because it was no small revelation to me that God amazingly accommodates to us in offering us salvation. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ Died for us!” (Romans 5:8)

Again, that title seems simplistic, not very insightful, really, more like a platitude. Yet, as I unpacked the revelation of God meeting us where we are in relation to my own life journey, it didn’t so simple. It certainly wasn’t obvious to me that God meets us where we are.

Most of the world, including me at one point in my life, believes that we need to become good enough for God. The goal of most world religions and of most people who are seeking to gain salvation, nirvana, or whatever concept of “heaven” or acceptance by the divine creator of the universe people have, is to meet whatever standard that is required.

When I was asked one day why Jesus should let me into his heaven, I immediately searched my life for the positive things I had done that hoped would convince him to let me in. I don’t think I was alone in that thinking.

When the man who asked me that question eventually told me (after patiently listening to me rattle off the good things I had done) that I could do nothing to earn my way into heaven, I was floored. I wasn’t even convincing myself that Jesus should let me in!

“You mean it’s a free gift?! No one can earn it, so no one can boast?” I recited to myself, asking rhetorical questions to wrap my head around that revelation bomb that was dropped on me! Mind blown!

I have never been the same.

I grew up in an era of spiritual seeking. From Zen Buddhism to Hari Krishnas, I was just another spiritual seeker trying to “find myself”. many people like me took to the road looking for truth and meaning anywhere we could find it. Even before Oprah, people were looking inside themselves and everywhere else for God and ultimate meaning wherever they could find it.

It really isn’t all that obvious that God would come after us. After all, he is the sovereign creator of the world. Why would he have anything to do with human beings who are here today and gone tomorrow? Who are we that God should come to us?

“[W]hat is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:4)

Yet, Jesus says God loves us! He knows each one of us so intimately that He can count every hair on our heads! He knows when we come and go; He knows the words we speak, even before they trip off our tongues; and He is near to us wherever we are! (Psalm 139)

His attitude towards us is like the shepherd who seeks a lost sheep when it has wandered off. (Matthew 18:12-14) He seeks after us!

The story of Kayla is complex. She struggled most of her life with same sex attraction and gender dysphoria. She ran from church because she didn’t think she belonged and sought meaning in her dysphoria and sexual identity.

We are not different than Kyla. Most people hide the complexity (messiness) of our lives from other people because of shame and confusion, and many other things. But, God knows us. Intimately.

And He loves us. He loves us enough to die for us in our current condition! He meets us where we are.

That basic concept is the backdrop for my thoughts today: If God meets us where we are; we need to be willing to meet other people where they are.

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God, Work Ethic, and the Children of God

We believe in what we can earn, and the justice we demand is commensurate with our ability to gain what we deserve. Not so with God. Or so it seems….

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The parable of the workers in the field exposes an attitude and way of thinking that gets in our way of knowing and understanding God and our relationship to Him. This parable is confusing and nonsensical to our naturally prideful and selfish inclinations.

The parable of the workers in the field begins with some people at the break of day who agree with the owner of a field to work for one denarius (a day’s wage). Throughout the day, the owner went out and solicited more workers to work in his field.

Workers began at different times during the day. Some workers didn’t even begin to work until late-afternoon. When the day was over, the owner of the field paid everyone the same wage (one denarius), regardless of when they started.

The workers who labored all day were upset. They challenged the owner, saying “Why are we being paid only one denarius when the workers who didn’t work the full day are being paid the same?” Some of them didn’t work more than a couple hours!

The owner’s answer to their question is something that typical Americans have a hard time understanding and accepting: he said, “I paid you what you agreed to work for. If I want to be generous to everyone else, what is that to you?” (See Matt. 20:1-16)

But, it isn’t fair! Right? Isn’t that the natural response we have? Nothing gets the blood rushing to the head like someone getting more than what I got! Especially, if they didn’t earn it like I did!!

As a person who grew up Catholic, these things did not make sense to me either. People should get what they deserve, right? Naturally, people should earn their own way. I would not ask for more than what I deserve, but I have a hard time with people getting the same as I do when they work less than me.

We think this way generally as Americans with our rugged individualism, labor unions, and the American Dream (which may have more to do with hard work than dreaming to hear someone tell of it).

The message that comes through this parable load and clear is that God doesn’t think like we do. God does what He wants, or (at least) He seems to have a different measure of fairness than we do.

Romans in the day of Jesus weren’t completely different than modern Americans, though they valued power and might, perhaps, more than we do. They despised the poor and vulnerable. The people who were able to exert their power and influence over other people were valued (and envied) most. This parable wouldn’t have made sense to romans either.

The Jews in Jesus’s day were proud of their heritage. They earned their status with millennia of adherence to the Mosaic Law. They bristled at the idea that upstart Gentiles might come along and gain some interest in God’s kingdom.

This parable made little sense to First Century Hebrews also. Maybe we all have our cultural barriers to this kind of message.

I image Jesus was a favorite son. He was the good young man, mostly polite, and obedient He was keenly interested in Scripture and all things pertaining to religious life that was the heartbeat of any Jewish community.

He was also not quite like the other young men, a bit odd, maybe a bit too into his heritage, if that is possible. They were all good Hebrews, but he seemed to take it a bit far, even for them.

Maybe they couldn’t put their finger on it, but people seemed to agree that he made them feel as if he thought he had an inside track. He sometimes made them feel like outsiders.

Jesus traveled one day to Nazareth where he grew up. He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath. (Luke 4:16) He stood up in front of his lifelong friends and neighbors, asked for the Isaiah scroll, and read from it:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

When Jesus finished reading from the Isaiah scroll, he rolled it up, handed it back and sat down without immediate comment. All eyes were on Jesus during that pregnant pause. Then Jesus concluded:

“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Mic drop moment. Followed by a moment of stunned silence. We might say they were flabbergasted. At least at first.

Jesus had a remarkable way about him that made people wonder about him, even if they were not completely comfortable with him. He had always seemed older than his age, but he spoke with insight and certainty like an elder of great age, experience, and learning.

They knew Jesus, though. They knew where he worked. He did not have the credentials fit for his seeming attitude. Nazareth was a forgotten, insignificant place in the Hebrew community, though it wasn’t far from more beaten paths. Jesus was always the enigma.

They knew Joseph was a quiet and simple man. He never called attention to himself. Mary always glowed with the pride of a mother who sees more in her children than anyone else on earth, especially in Jesus. No one could blame her.

As often was the case with Jesus, they didn’t know quite how to take him. “Good news to the poor”, “freedom for prisoners”, “sight for the blind”, and “the year of the Lord’s favor”: this was a good word. All good Hebrews have a hopeful expectancy for these things, even as they always seem just out of reach.

Still, they always hope. That’s what they do. They cling to God’s promise

That Joseph was always so quiet highlighted to them all the more how remarkable Jesus was that he seemed to have such a grand, if not slightly delusional, perspective. They were polite and appropriately appreciative, but they didn’t even have time to wonder what the elders had planned for Sabbath that day, when Jesus interrupted their thoughts. This time he dropped a grenade:

“Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’” (Luke 4:23)

What… is… he… saying? “Is he talking about himself? … Really?!

They were well aware of the zealots who riled people up in their area in recent years. Those trouble makers caused serious problems for good Hebrews just minding their own business and trying to get by.

Their minds played over the words Jesus just read: “The spirt of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me.” …. “Don’t tell me he believes he is God’s anointed!” This guy has a messiah complex!

As if that were not provocation enough, Jesus really pushed them over the edge with what he said next:

“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” (Luke 4:24-27)

Not only did Jesus appear to be claiming he was God’s anointed one; he seemed to be claiming that God cared more about the Gentiles than his own people! What else could be the point of referring to the Elijah visiting the foreign widow and Elisha healing the foreign general?

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